Knowledge is Power
by Kellise
Summary: Story for Mr Obama's story prompt. A modern day guy is teleported to Halo s timeline, having played the game. What difference can he make with foreknowledge? Rated T for mild language and realistic reactions to having your body be yanked 500 years forward.
1. Conscience

_They say you are what you eat_

I`m throwing up. I`m almost hundred percent sure that's what this is supposed to be. My stomach feels like the inside of a trash can, and bluntly the trash can I'm filling up isn't looking much worse or better for wear. I mean hell I know I stayed up last night but it looks like I ate food over a hundred years old for god's sake.

My clothes too, they look old. Worn, as if preserved in a closet for a decade or so. I feel _awful_. I look around and see the alley I woke up in, a dank place that looks like any run down street in any city. Sheesh, I hope I haven`t wandered too far. I wander out and see… low air shuttles and is that… a Pelican?

Frack.

It only takes me an hour of wandering to confirm what I expected. I`m in the future somehow, and look to be homeless and screwed. Looks like the Halo time line as well, discarded newspapers are talking about the war, dated 2552. That's not good, but I already confirmed I`m in future day UK so on a wing and a prayer the war shouldn`t be an issue. I`m getting weird looks and I can understand why, I can smell I don`t exactly reek of roses right now.

I sit down in a corner of a square, out of sight and begin breaking down. Where the hell am I exactly? How did this happen? Why? Why me? My family are...dead? Hundreds of years dead? I`m trying not to cry and failing when I hear it.

"Sir, excuse me?" Low and feminine but strong, I'm not wrong when I assume it's the police and she looks...tough. Armour, a Magnum on her hip. I would assume marine but the word POLICE written on her chest plate really doesn`t lead to a second conclusion. "Are you OK sir?" She`s talking as if I am an idiot, pronouncing it Oh-Kay and slow. I stare as I consider my options.

"R-rough night, can`t really remember much." I manage. I sound as dry as a forest fire.

"You look it kid. Where you from?" Another pause, and I realise the last thing I need right now is her finding out I`m effectively homeless. A lie then.

"Up north" I mumble, searching my pockets reflexivly and finding my wallet "Don`t suppose any of this is useful is it? My, dad" I fake a cough to cover my pause that devolves into a very real coughing fit. "Dad gave it me before I left." I manage to choke out. She takes it hesitantly and looks it over, noting the cards and looking confused. She takes her radio and gives me a wait gesture as she radio's it in. Not a good sign. Neithers when she takes me into a police car a few minutes later.


	2. Lloyding over the world

I hate tea. Can I just stop right now to tell you how MUCH I hate tea? It's actually just a cup full of boiling (boiling?!) hot brown crap that honestly should be hunted down and destroyed with extreme prejudice. I would, given a chance enact a seek and destroy campaign globally to end to bane that is tea. And yet now, five hundred years into the future I'm sat in a rather up town police station staring at a cup of bloody tea. I pick up one of the biscuits and slump onto my arm, using it to hold my head up as I take a bite, starving. At least they`re not barbaric enough to just hand me tea, I guess. I`m also now wearing a rather tasteless grey jumpsuit type thing they found out to replace my clothes.

I have my guesses about my illness, the strange look of the puke, my fatigue and strange heat flashes as if I had eaten five hundred year old chicken. I think that might be exactly what I did. Because while I transferred apparently to this timelime, (or was Halo just a point on head prediction?) nothing protected my clothes from standard decay, nor apparently the contents of my stomach. The real question is what I do now?

Voice? Hello? You could really be useful any time now? Well thinking to myself isn't helping a great deal is it.

I look around the room again sulkily, grey walls, some educational-esk posters about new laws ("Don't drink and take a space elevator!") and a few other bored people being kept waiting.

"Mr Schmidt?" I hear as I turn to source the rough as sand paper voice. An old man, greying with a "I Have Seen To MuchTM" look. I stand up and walk towards him.

"That's me sir." I report neutrally.

"Follow me." He says turning, walking me though corridor after corridor of dingy grey station walls before going into an interview room with a second, suited man already sat down next to an empty chair. He goes to sit in the one next to him, I hover next to the one across the desk before the man in black nods at me. I take my cue to sit just before he starts talking.

"Lazarus Schmidt." The man in black says, and I have a sinking feeling I can guess who his boss is. I nod. "You told the men at this station-" Well that confirms that. "-you don`t have any memory of last night, don`t understand where you are and gave Ms Officer Moss your wallet, claiming it was your dads." He slaps down said wallet. "It dates back over five hundred years to you, a very dead you. So what the hell do I do with you Mr Schmidt."

I look at him nervously. This guy could have me shot right here right now is the feeling I am getting. "I have no idea, Sir, I just woke up and it wasn`t when I was expecting. I only lied because this sounds crazy."

"Well the issue I'm having is we have had a recommend theory by an officer which makes enough sense we might just have to chase it. We believe you may have been frozen against your will and thrown out again for some reason. The technology did exist back in your time, although why anyone would care about you enough to do so I have no idea." I nod to that, I have no idea who would throw me into time travel either, so this makes a reasonable amount of sense. "So we are investigating what to do with you. You also have lucked out and been covered by the Cryofinance act of 2085, where many rich people had accounts banned from being discontinued after death so people in cryogenic stasis could claim their money back. As such I have spent the last three hours reviving your dead account and the bank has retroactively paid you an amount of credits an annoyingly smug accountant has told me he translated to the purchasing power of around five hundred thousand of your modern day pounds."

I'm making a conscious attempt to fetch my metaphorical jaw of the floor. I settle for picking my physical one back up after a few seconds and stop stuttering and manage an "Excuse me?"

"Yes, Mr Schmidt. You are" he does air quote marks slowly "A rather lucky amnesiac with a bucket load of money." He puts his hands down

…

Three hours later, I'm sat in an estate brokers trying not to fall asleep as they waffle at me in a new business suit with a back pack sat next to me, finalising my purchases of two small flats in the city and a decent two bedroom suburban bungalow type affair. Turns out with colonization allowing over population to be sorted out city sized apartment blocks are not a thing.

Buy to let agreements and transport to my home arranged, the enthusiastic woman that had introduced herself as Carrie handing me digipapers onto the datapad I purchased. "It was nice doing business with you Mr Schmidt." She says rather chirpy "And I'm glad you chose to rent your new properties with us!"

I turn and smile weakly as I get into the taxi. "Please, call me Russ."


	3. Knowledge is Power

_Three weeks later_

"Will there be anything else, Sir?" The Liberian asks me politely, looking down at her datapad, already distracted. I want to sigh and request a competent librarian that doesn't have super glue strength bonding with her datapad but once again, I'm also trying to be as discreet as possible and abusing some random doesn't seem like a good plan

"No. Thank you." I state bluntly, looking down at the mass-file she's found me.

 **Internet Logs, 2010-2019, Wikia Systems**

I open it up plug it into my own data-pad, downloading the entire thing. I had my memory expanded for this exact purpose and have already paid the liberary for copying fees so I figure I might as well do my searches where ONI, or whatever the normal intelligence agencies around here are called can't come and find it, if it's here at all. I open up my side tab and start playing _Spartan Force,_ a small base building Waypoint game. Not exactly the most fun thing in the world but it does bring back fond memories of playing Total Domination back...well. Way back when. The full download takes almost two full hours even with the best connection possible. Peer to peer copying was never the intended format, the mass-files are apparently supposed to be end user products. Still, I have what I came for.

I ping another app on my pad and walk outside. I only have to wait a minute before the taxi arrives, and I once again consider actually getting a driving license. Then I sit back, get comfortable and look at the polite little V.I in my pad waving at me to inform me my Force has another building ready for the assembly stage and smirk.

Why the hell would I want to have to make the effort anyway?

. . .

My door slides open for me as I walk towards it, stepping into the highly modern bungalow, or as they are now called "Single floor residences". Dull future names are...dull?

I walk down the little shoe area and turn into the main corridor, which all my rooms branch off of. I ignore the toilet and spare bedroom, and then turn left at the end of the hall turning my back on my bedroom to go into the kitchen, a modern little affair with cooking appliance that haven't changed much since the 21st century, bar the fact the amount of oven round the oven and such is considerably smaller. I wish I could be impressed by the level of miniaturization but seriously, I don't have a cook gun? I can't just press a button on my chicken and it cooks itself? I can't have meals delivered in my yard via orbital drop pods?

Shenanigans, I tell you. Although having the washing machine be small enough to be easily carryable was nice. I named it Tiny Wash Wally.

I slap a meal in the oven (chicken slices and chips) and sit down to skim through the file. "Haha!" I exclaim, finding what I want only a mere thirty seconds after starting.

 **Halo Nation**

I really hope ONI don't track this down, or it could cause alot of issues. And remove my main advantage. And good god I don't want ONI to know everything. I remember Hunt the Truth after all. But this Wiki, this wiki contains everything I need to know about big events in the galaxy. I open up the file for Halo 8 curiously.

"Oh well shit. Let's hope not." I comment idly after a few minutes reading, then tab back and extract the wiki, deleting the other bumf I picked up while saving it. Now I have access to any and all predictions I need, I need to work out what to do with them.


	4. Booted Camp

Sweat is pouring off my face. My muscles burn, and I'm fed up and tired. It's been two months now, since I got that damned article. A month since I started this. And here I am again, the most well informed person in the galaxy doing push ups in a muddy field while it rains.

"You men want to be officers?!" The drill sergeant screams at us. "Pathetic! Not one of you is worth a grain of salt, not one of you could lift your own parents out of a burning building without whining about having to put the effort in! Why in Gods name you whimpering husks even bother joining up I will Never understand!"

Two hours, we've been at this. Two hours of just up, down, up, down. Before long I damned well know he'll have us up running the course, every muscle still burning before we ram food down our face and begin drill, with barely enough time to get into formal wear and look neat for it.

And then I'm proven right. "You lazy shitwads, Up! Up now! Move move move!" He screams it, never going hoarse, never stopping for breath. Honestly you start to want to tune it out, but every now and again he'll ask you what he just said and everyone's screwed if you can't answer. I run with my squad, right behind the leader to the course. As usual, the equally sadistic course staff are firing blanks above our heads before we even get to the course. Not one of us flinch, we know that would only result in a clip to the top of our helmet or arse.

We crawl though deep mud as they shoot over us, occusinally clipping us just to freak us out. You'd think blank means it just makes the noise. It doesn't. It still hurts like a bitch and they bruise badly. You learn not to care. Then we climb a ten foot wall, in full gear hurling and dragging eachother up. I'm not the slowest here by a long shot, but I still wait to make sure our whole squad is up. Coming last as a squad is no meal, or the best team of the day gets to hose you with a full mag each. It's not fun.

Swing ropes, urban debris, waist high water, more debris and what seems to be half a demolished forest later and we reach the end. Not last, not first but with a decent enough time no one calls us pathetic more than normal.

 _Later, in the mess hall._

"I swear, the sergeants are trying to kill us Russ." Bell says, whining about the quality of the food again. Russ. A nickname to start with, but less of a mouthful then Lazarus so by now everyone calls it me bar the sergeants, who insist scream Schmidt every chance they get. I swear, it's just because it's an unusual surname around here. I would feel bullied, but they batter all of us the same way.

"Quit whining Bell, you only look like a massive nob." I point out politely, eating my own. He's right of course, the food is a disgrace to the name of food and I couldn't tell you exactly what I was eating, but pointing that out wasn't going to help things out.

"He always does anyway." Koi points out. Where I'm quite a lanky guy, and Bell's pretty average in every-way Koi is an oddity. As short as you can be, almost overweight but having seen the guy with his shirt off it's undoubtable he's the strongest of us. Makes him good for throwing over the wall first, light enough to get up easy, strong enough to drag our sorry arses up after him.

"Yep." Chimes in Loveless. Poor girl, she's not much shorter than me but mean looking and with a face like a beat in brick. It's not a huge surprise she ended up in the military, and she's hardly one for socialising. Her name isn't ironic, she doesn't care about anyone or anything and I've never heard anyone say anything positive about her bar "dependable."

"Just shut up and eat, we haven't got long left." Io snaps, our squad leader. Average looking lass, not amazingly strong and only just gets average scores on tests but when it comes to the leadership and command simulations she's consistently one of the best in our class. Not a surprise she was made our squad leader. One of the sanest things the drills have decided to do since we got here, really. We finish up, stand up and go outside as soon as our dishes are stacked and form up. And then we wait, wincing when we hear that telltale sound of a squad not getting out fast enough. It echoes across all our faces when the drill comes out, the squad double timing.

Back to the fields then. Great.


	5. Fire Guard

**A/N: Poll up on my profile. Will decide stuff. Go look. Sorry for the A/N.**

Four hours later, we finally make it back to base. We don't even wait for the order from Io, we all know where we're going as we walk out of the billet carrying towels, our filthy bodies reeking of sweat, misery and humiliation. You can only be pounded into the dirt by hand to hand trainers when you've already done a full days work so many times, so we thought. The drills once again proved us that they're not sane, we're not going to be sane and the trainers are just damned sadistic. Kudos to them for not just running from our odour though.

I look over to Koi. "How did they not get bored?"

He looks back over to me and shrugs. "They signed up for the job for a reason Russ, maybe they just really like throwing trainees around."

"That's not a pleasant thought." I point out.

"Well what do you want me to say? None of that seemed to have any point?"

Io pushes open the door to the showers and we all walk in. None of us are wearing anything, the shoulders just on our shoulders before we place them onto the hooks and slump into the showers. Good thing about the showers in our half an hour of free time is they don't have limits. The drills will occasionally come in and generally debrief/insult/see where your squads at sometimes, and they tend to take the piss when they walk in and find five trainees sat down under the shower heads, but apparently there are no rules against it.

"I think it's Bell." Loveless chips in.

"Well duh." The rest of us chime, bar Bell who's just sulking with a bar of soap in the corner.

"Naww, need a tampon Bell?" Io teases.

"Nah fuck you guys. Y'all just jealous of my shooting scores yesterday."

I laugh lightly and sit back, enjoying the water pouring through my inch of hair. "Maybe you should shoot for a better time getting out of bed then, stop getting us grilled!"

"Nah, fuck you Russ." He winks, I wink back. Koi provides helpful chocking noises as we all start to wash.

"Say, Io, what are we doing tomorrow?" Loveless asks, her voice as rough as ever.

"Bar communily beating Bell up?" A round of chuckling. "Second round of EVA training, followed by shipboard studies and zero gee combat sims." We all stare blankly.

"In one day?" Bell manages after a few seconds. Io nods.

"Well." I sigh.

That's certainly a downer.

Two hours later

I sit silently at the fire guard post, doing my shift. I hear a faint double tap beind me and stay still, listening carefully. Sure my 180 arc is free, I double tap my own foot. It's not five seconds before I feel someone sit down behind me.

"Little maverick, you still hanging around here?" It whispers softly.

"You know I don't sleep as much as you guys." I reply.

"Maybe you should try abit more instead of always sending back your replacement. It wouldn't kill you to catch ten hours instead of seven and half you know."

"Are you so sure?" I smirk.

"You're a pain in my ass Russ." A poke into the lower part of my shoulder blade, right into the omnipresent knot under it.

"It takes one to-" Ow, and again!

"Shut up." Io sits down next to me. "You gonna let me take my shift? I mean what, you trying to pull me by being the bad man?" She teases.

"Io, really?" I raise an eyebrow, looking slightly in her direction. Her chocolate fuzz catching the dim night lighting.

"I still don't get it. Four weeks. You aint tried shit, me, Loveless" I roll my eyes. "Koi or even Bell. Are you dead inside Russ?" Mock seriousness, tinged with teasing.

"Maybe I'm just a nice guy."

"Nice? You've given up nearly a quarter of your allocated sleeping time sat for the sake of staring at a staircase. Only two reasons to do that, impress someone, or earning favours."

"Well the later makes sense. Why not that?" I point out.

"Because you have an aura."

"...Wat."

"Your aura!" She whisper shouts.

"...You're insane. It must be a leadership trait."

"Seriously Russ. Koi and Loveless would totally back me up, there's just something about you."

"It's my handsome good looks." Ow, that really hurts.

"Bull. It's like your always planning something big, like they're is something your running to meet. You never even seem to complain, not like the others."

"Awh, does my mysterious ways make you quiver?" Ow, ow, ow.

"Asshat. Seriously though, what's your game?"

"I just want you four at the top of your game. I want us to be the top of our class in this place, and I want to not flunk and get stuck with Bell for another six weeks."

"Mhmm."

We sit for what must be fifteen minutes. After five she sits next to me and uses my shoulder as a head rest. It's weird, but not unusual. I don't get Io, but I'm fairly sure this is comfort. Her way of relaxing and not focusing on her work. After a couple of weeks of starting here, I noticed my shifts always preceded or came after hers. Then she sighs.

"What?"

"Go to bed, Schmidt." She says, sitting up.

"Is that an order, squad leader?" I ask, mildly confused. She usually waits longer than this.

"Yes, trainee, it is." I stand, salute and go to turn around. "If you need me…"

"You'll be the first to know." She chuckles softly.

I make my way to bed, tuck myself under the thin blanket and lay thinking. Over two thirds there, before I can enact the next stage of my plan. So very, very close.


	6. Honestly, that is not a pillow

I fall to the ground, my head slamming into the cold steel and everything goes black, then fades into a horrific grey. Shouting, gun shots. Fuck, what's going on here?! I manage to crawl onto all fours only to feel a sudden sharp pain in my arm, collapsing me again. Screaming… was that my name?

And then a pinprick. Tiny, almost insignificant and a slap around the face. "Russ, get up! Get up now!"

I look at my arm, the needle just popping out as Io screams into the side of my face. I'm absolutely covered in numbing ammo stains, but Io has our team medkit in hand and has removed the layer. Still can't feel my arm though. More than a few enemy team members are laid unconscious on the floor. My head kills.

"What the hell is going on?" I ask groggily, still mildly concussed. The steel and rude awakening from cryo is messing with me.

"Orange team used first strike as their stratagem and selected their best sprinters. Everyone here seems to be a top performer in the full gear runs. Had a team on the ground before we even woke up, the bastards. We could of been in trouble if they hadn't tripped the base's motion sensors and had half of us thawed before they got in." I frown at her report, noticing the others grouped around us.

"Orders, Squad leader?" I ask.

"Get bloody dressed, Schmidt." She rolls her eyes, and I look down.

"Huh...I really am concussed."

. . .

Half an hour later, actually geared and fully recovered from my jolt to the floor (with a mild helping of pills from the medkit), I'm stood with my magboots locked firmly to the floor. While our cryo room (affectionately called the spawn room) has gravity, the rest of the training station doesn't. I check my gun for the fifth time, loitering with the squad bar one. Io's still off getting orders.

"You think we get paid enough for this?" Bell says, looking over at Loveless.

"What to deal with you? Hell no Bell." She deadpans.

"C'mon, seriously though. They tried to ram Russ though the floor!"

"They was just jealous of my handsome features…" I mutter just loudly enough to be heard.

Koi chuckles, Bell rolls his eyes and turns to me. "Seriously, you get slammed into steel like a ragdoll and are making jokes?"

"Bell, if you wanted to get paid why on Earth are you in the UNSC?" I quip back. He actually mulls it over for a while, thinking it over before conceding with a shrug as we see Io coming back.

"Great news guys!" She says loudly with a smile on her face. The rest of us look at each other confused. Io doesn't do happy go lucky. She frowns. "What not fooled? Fine then, I was going to sell you a heroic stupid charge but you can do pessimistic. We're on point."

"Bell upfront." Koi smirks as he says it.

"Agreed." Io nods, smirking slightly herself as the man walks up and rolls his eyes. "Are we really doing this with just basic gear?" He whines.

"No, we have the, get this, stun incendiary grenades stratagem. A smoke version of the stun grenade, that gets everywhere and is tinted red using stuff similar to flares." She smiles with actual joy. Now don't get me wrong, Io is probably the person I'm least likely to use as a meat shield in the entire galaxy. But they is something unsettling about how much she likes screwing with the other teams. And us, for that matter. I look over at the others and shrug. How bad can this be? I mean with high level grenades, we should be absolutely fine. Nothing can go wrong.

 _The Tonokar station, a small orbital installation above Earth is intended as a zero gee medical facility. As such it outfitted with a huge number of wards, storage areas and zero gee therapy areas. During 2544, Tonokar was_ _requisitioned_ _by and not returned from the UNSC, who would go onto outright buy the rights to the facility for it's exceptional level of complexity, confusing area design and low key profile. It came as a simple added bonus that it is intended for civilian use, and therefore has an incredible level of thought put into the quick and easy clean up of spilt bodily fluids, a unfortunately common issue in civilian populations who are unfamiliar with zero gee._


	7. No, really

I take cover in the doorway, a spray of stun rounds ripping through the frame as I crouch, trying to avoid my ample quantities of height sticking up over the top of the door. I look down at Io, who nods up at me and then watch as she throws her `incendiary` grenade. The sudden shock and horror from the enemy team is reassuring as we hear a set of dull thuds, most likely them hitting the floor. Then, as the sizzling stops I watch Bell, then Loveless vault over the frame from where they are standing on their respective walls and, if they haven't hit anything I now know they'll be flying low into the room. Personally, stood on the ceiling I now vault over the top of the frame myself and land feet first on the roof, running until I spot good cover and disengaging my locks to jump and land behind it.

Three loud "clear!"s later and Io walks though, closely followed by Koi guarding the rear.

"Loveless, how many do we have in here?" She says quietly over comms.

"Eight Squad Leader, looks like they're using irregular squad sizes."

"Typical Orange team tactics. If the intel we bartered for off of Blue team is right, we should be facing tripwire stratagems next, it's how they found and maimed Blue's stealth team and they won that game, so they likely didn't change out. Koi, take point, Bell on our rear." Io orders. I look up from where I'm fleecing the downed orange team members for ammo and gear "We should move quickly, no way they won't notice a team this size going dark."

She nods without even looking at me. "I know that Schmidt, we got their maps?" I look down at the data pad I've already glanced at and packed into a size pocket and take it out, passing it to Io. She stares at it for about twenty seconds before deciding where to attack and moving us out.

We all fall in and move out, generally keeping our eyes open. The data we have thus far indicates for all intents and purposes we just broke the last line of defence before their core though. Koi suddenly stops us, leaning down and disarming a small tripwire trap. "Predictable." He mutters. We move in deeper, only a room away from their main computer, the objective of our operation that can give us the location of all of their team members, allowing the rest of the team to hunt down and eliminate the few hundred members of Orange team moving around. (The corps didn't mess around when training us, each training block would number between five to ten three hundred man battalions.)

We step up, ready to breach the door when we hear gunfire. Koi looks at Io confused and she hand signals `check it out`. He tries budging the door, but the locks are sealed and it's pretty obvious the door (a massive ten foot by six foot affair) is intended only to be breached via our `artificial breaching charges`. (They make alot of noise and spray stun stuff everywhere before opening any door they're attached to.)

Koi plants it and we all run back before it goes off, the sudden rain of stun spray shooting by our cover of a bunch of lockers we pulled out and formed into a barricade. After waiting for it to stop and looking through the door we see the large computer core room, a few orange team members spraying us. With a dull thunk, Loveless gets hit in the face as we all stare like idiots to see what's going on and we rapidly rethink and take cover.

Seconds later, Io breaks radio silence. "This is Uniform, November, Sierra, Charlie, Pink, Jungle team to Uniform, November, Sierra, Charlie, Pink, HQ, we are at objective. Hostiles engaged, please advise, over."

We play gunminton for a little while, hitting a couple and having to have Bell take yet more of our already low medical spray. Sadly, it's not rated for skin contact, which makes headshots `lethal` so we're still a man down when control gets back to us. "Jungle, this is HQ, High Five breached enemy lines and last reported being isolated and making a last ditch push for the core. They only had one radio, so it damn well might be them but reading our screwed due to how deep you are. Could be any number up to ten members there. Be careful, and try for no pink on pink action. Over."

"Confirm HQ, Jungle out." Io finishes the conversation and hurls a incendiary. A few seconds later we charge in, taking position at the poor fools cover and begin trying to breach further. A few seconds later I fall flat on my face and spray a Orange team member as he hits my leg. Io sprays it, running the can out before the patch is done. I'm limping, but have enough movement to walk. Ish. We clear further in, cover to cover spraying as we go, taking at least four members out. In all fairness, we're flanking and this is a damn easy fight. Before long we reach a large opening in the server filled room, with almost twenty hostiles already in cover around the central booth where the hub is. We see a light splattering of blind fire as the hostiles target (High Five?) sprays from behind the devices. It's clear the only thing stopping them being dropped is cover they're in...the main computer, which has detectors for nearby explosives which shut it down. While a team could restore it over time, it would cripple their coordination. And they think they can overwhelm their target.

With a smirk, Io whispers grenades, and we all lob our one standard grenade before blind firing madly and screaming.

I don't know if they heard the grenades over that, but they felt it alright. A short firefight with two eejits hiding behind a cover we missed later, and we turn to find a face peeking around the corner of the hub. "Thanks, Jungle right? I've uploaded the data though to our main hub and locked them out, can we wreck this joint and leave now?"

Io keeps her gun aimed at him. "Identify, now, and step away from the console." He does so, and speaks back looking annoyed as all hell. "Indrick Miller, High Five trainee, Pink Battalion, Ma'am." She motions for Koi to search him and me to go check the terminal. Bell takes overwatch and keeps an eye on things as Io moves herself into cover. I look it over, breaking his seal and see that he's telling the truth, the data is linked and the terminal is shut down to orange cards, it's access is only open to pink members. In fact, the only reason I got though the lockdown so quickly was it locked to our alternative cipher. "He's telling the truth Squad Leader." I report. Io smiles and lowers his gun, Koi's check already done.

"Sorry Miller, had to be sure. Let's wreck this joint.

 _Camp Kierrah basic training regimes has an optimum 2400 recruits at any time. These recruits form a training regiment, split into eight 300 man battalions, each colour coded for the purpose of war games. These are further split into two platoons of equal size, split into four thirty man platoons of three squads. The remaining thirty members, are split into six five man fireteams for specialist missions, although the normal squads will also have allocated fireteams for when splitting is the optimum strategy. With the UNSC vs Covenant war at its pinnacle, the camp rarely has to change from these target sizes._

 _It is worth mention that naming systems at any time and structure systems after the few weeks of training are up to Battalion leaders from the OTS (Officer Training School.) Officers are often put alternated between leadership and front line roles, to give maximum pre-op experience._

 _During wargames, to further enhance the tactical thinking and flexibility of officers, fixed or selectable 'stratagems' are given. These stratagems are always a edge up on the enemy team, and the teams rarely have the same ones._


	8. Ask Not

_Five weeks into Basic Training, a few days after Zero-Gee Combat Exercise (Orange VS Pink 2)_

 _1.43am_

Have you ever just sat down and listened to your environment? No? Wait till your home alone and stand up, turn all the lights of bar this screen and pull your curtains if it's day. Now turn off the TV, disconnect yourself from your Waypoint connection and just sit and listen.

What do you hear? The ticking of a clock? The scurrying of rodents? A piece of paper blowing of a surface in the wind? Breathing on your neck? It can't be, surely? You look around, but you can't see because it's so dark, and you're blinded.

Keep this up for a few hours, and you start to get twitchy. Now let me tell you you know for sure that at any time someone might attack you, break in as quietly as possible and try and wreck you and everything else they can get their hands on.

Guard duty in week five sums up that feeling. That horrific feeling of dread. Three days now since we was moved into secondary billets in the middle of the training fields and told at night we would either receive attack orders, or be the subject of them. So far we haven't been attacked once. And we haven't had orders, not even once.

I look around again and scan the area with the binoculars I was provided (apparently giving us some real night vision gear would have been too easy) and see nothing but our forward trenches with some bored looking sentries. I look over to Bell and see him doing the same with his sniper rifle, wishing his had a night vision scope so we'd at least have some way of knowing if there was anyone outside our visual range. But it's way too dark, and we're pretty much blind.

And then, the tiniest noise. The slightest whisper and then a dull thunk as the stun round catches Bell right in the head and knocks him out and another grazes my arm as I flinch.

I duck down, ramming myself into cover and whisper into my comms "Uniform, November, Sierra, Charlie, Pink, Tower 3 to Uniform, November, Sierra, Charlie, Pink HQ, my gunner is down and I am under sniper fire, I repeat my gunner is down and I am under sniper fire."

And then, before they can even respond, I hear a crunch down near the base of my very exposed tower.

Tell me, what do you hear, in the middle of the darkness?


	9. Like an Avocado

I slowly ease myself down the steps, a few at a time until I can half crouch without my head under risk of being hit like Bell. I am about to go further down when I see half a gun suddenly poke around the corner.

I jump, and by a miracle the idiot walks right into my path as I spray a burst off and land on him, swinging around and using him as a meat shield towards the way he came and spraying to my other side, then, feeling rather dumb shoot the other way and back up into better cover as noone was actually flanking.

I put down suppressing fire and grab the fallen trooper's, Green team, gun and use it instead of reloading. And then it hits me, they're muffled. The damned bastards have hit us with suppressors and while a suppressed gun is still loud the sound travels much less. Which to be honest explains their plan. Take me down before I could call an alarm, silently take half the camp down and cripple us. But now I can hear our guns opening up elsewhere, and it looks like I might have reinforcements on the way. I hear more then see another shot whiz by my face and flinch back, blind firing around a corner.

"I repeat, come in Tower 3, report over!" I flinch again as my earpiece blares angrily at me. I must of tuned him out while taking out the poor green sod at the base of my tower.

"HQ this is Tower 3, under heavy fire with a man down, need immediate relief and medi-vac for my sniper, over" I reply tersely, sending out another volley and checking behind me. I nearly fill my trousers as I see five men sprinting in behind me.

"Tower 3, you should have Fireteam Kansas closing on you over."

The leadman gives me a wave as I stop trying to aim at them, gun half way around my body. I put it back the correct facing (towards the enemy), hope they can't see me blushing and speak back while waiting for them to finish closing.

"Confirmed HQ, Tower 3 out."

I smack back a grenade that rolls around the corner, causing it to roll up into my tower slightly, hearing it denote just above my head and send a shower of stun paint across the top of my helmet and grass. Thankfully, it's light enough that it doesn't trigger anything. Kansas takes cover next to me.

"Evening. Heard you have a slight issue with green team?" The leader, a short lad with a macaber grin asks.

"Yeah, you could sa-wait, I never IDed them." I point out warily.

"No but Tower 5 did while taking down half the team attacking you."

Ah. "That explains why it took so long for them to throw a damned grenade." I look pointedly at the colourful explosion around me as a Kansas member shuffles by me and lobs a grenade, something sadly lacking from my gear, and then charges with two other members in a blaze of fire.

"You need to get up to barracks four and rally up with Squad Leader Io, we've got orders from command to launch a capture and control on Red Team while performing asset denial on this base." I nod, standing up and moving out. I can't hear any gunfire, but I can hear alot of shouting. It looks like our perimeter has been hit in several places from the radio traffic I'm hearing.

I arrive at barracks four to nine people stood waiting for me outside, the small building looks like half a tin can with two Warthogs parked outside, transport variants.

"Took your damned time, Lazarus." Io smirks at me, and goes on to tell me the plan.

This isn't going to be fun.


	10. An Angel called, Daniel

So no joke, here we are in two transport hogs, bouncing without lights on though the training area like blind moles that have been thrown into a soup of doom, with the occasional sniper trying to plink shots of at us. My usual fireteam has rallied up with another specialist team and we've formed Hotel Squad, we're running each fireteam in a hog and the drivers are from the motor-pool squad, which wasn't something I was aware we even had to be honest.

The snipers are trying their damnedest but we're going at excessive speeds, to the point where trying to talk as we hit the ground about hundred times a minute from the rough terrain comes out something along the lines of; "S-thunk-ow, so whe-thunk- ow-thunk- oww are -thunk" So safe to say, we gave up on that and just held on for dear life. Easy for Io in the passenger seat, but us four in the back are starting to feel like we're in a blender.

A shot clips the bar above my head, which I give a concerned look before we suddenly do a sharp turn, once again and then I hear Io shout "In thirty!" as the hog begins to slow and we all stand shakily, Bell falling but being caught by Loveless. Koi looks me in the eye and smirks, going to say something but then Io tells us to jump and we're all plummet onto the dirt, rolling as we go and the Hogs speed back up.

While they function as a distraction carnifex, we're planning to flank from an angle they don't expect and hit them where it hurts. While we're hitting red in the nuts the rest of the Pink are jumping down the gullet to try and rip the front open and take control of Red's base. The objective is to relocate into Red's base, while a platoon stays behind to perform asset denial and harass the members of green after setting the traps.

We move in, keeping low and moving from tree to tree, before suddenly-

 _Roughly ten minutes later_

-What the hell? I'm laid on the floor? Crap my head hurts… I look up and open my eyes, seeing Io hovering over me and the medic, a member from our secondary fireteam rapidly using stun round remover on my head. My head. Ah.

"`Bout time you woke up babykins, you missed all the fun." He snipes as I handle the realisation of my own sniping, or rather receiving of.

"We hit the perimeter then?" I ask, my voice sound slurred. Not in the clear yet then, the medic starts looking for something in his bag.

"You did, minor injuries on Bell and Unlai but the rest of us are fine, no where near as bad you. Didn't know you did bait, Laz." Io smiles at me, in a way that screams I'm going to shaft you into Australia from London.

"Well, wouldn't want Koi claiming all the tough guy awards would I." I smarm, going to stand before a sharp pinprick hits me in the arm. I glare at the medic as the world goes vivid. "I didn't need the adrenaline shot." I say, belatedly.

"I'm a unicorn wizard sent from the land of friendly Elites, now get your fat ass off my dirt and get moving." Mardy medic seems to be mardy, I stand up and move out with the rest of the squad, but before we can get far we all get the same announcement from the communications device in our ears.

"Purple team, game over. All members are to go rogue in the training area, down members will be extracted by marshalls."

It takes us four minutes more to reach the perimeter after the distraction, and we immediately come under fire. We spray out suppressing fire and take cover near their barricades, pushing back. In the distance we can hear light fire, not sure the deal with that is but we keep pushing forward. I press a button, hoping the scouts managed to get into the camp…

 _Two Hours before_

" _What are we even doing here Daniel?" The wiry scout said, looking up at her squad leader, sat at the edge of the enemy camp. So close now, with all these strange ball shaped items they'd been given to distribute._

" _I don't even know, would you just help me drag this prick, he must weight a ton." Daniel complained, dragging the downed Red Team member back into the grove of trees. They began stripping him and the other two members they'd previously bagged, a team mate assisting, dressing up into their uniforms. The scout helped them finish the task and looked up at Daniel._

" _I really hope this is worth it…"_


End file.
